2017 Keynote Speakers

Dr. Suzanne L. Stewart

Biography: Dr. Stewart is a member of the Yellowknife Dene First Nation and a registered psychologist. She is Director of the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health, and Associate Professor in Social and Behaviour Health Sciences at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Stewart’s research and teaching interests include Indigenous mental health and healing in psychology, focusing specifically on homelessness, youth mental health, identity, work-life development, Indigenous pedagogies in higher education, and Indigenous ethics and research methodology. She is also Chair of the Aboriginal Section of the Canadian Psychological Association and is committed to advancing Indigenous healing issues through the disciplines of health and psychology.

Education and Mental Health: Indigenous Knowledges for Canadians: Indigenous peoples in Canada represent about 4% of the overall population, yet at the same time are highly over-represented in demographics related to mental health problems and educational difficulties. The social determinants of health point to dismal outcomes for Aboriginal populations, with high rates of poverty, unemployment, historical trauma, and low educational attainment and achievement. Interestingly, prior to contact with Europeans in the 1400s, Indigenous peoples had few mental health problems and had successful practices for dealing with social problems, including those related to teaching and learning. Indigenous pedagogies are based on concepts of relationship, culture, colonial context, and empowerment. Currently, Indigenous education problems are addressed by the Canadian systems with non-Indigenous forms of intervention, teaching, and learning, such as Western pedagogies. Research shows this practice to be a continued form of colonization and oppression. There is little documented success in the literature of the use of Western pedagogies with Indigenous students in any school system. Ethical and effective educational practices include culturally appropriate models, appropriately educated educators, and “evidence based practice”—none of which are currently employed with Indigenous and culturally diverse students accessing higher education in Canada.

Dr. Stewart’s talk will discuss how Indigenous knowledges can be used with all students, and what the challenges of this are. Key issues will be illuminated relating to importance of context, history, and culture in order to understand what it means to engage in a psychoeducational paradigm shift.

Dr. Yuka Nakamura Biography: Dr. Nakamura is an Assistant Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University. She studies how race, class, and gender impact people’s identities and experiences in sport. She is especially interested in sport organized by ethnic and/or religious groups as a way to create a sense of community. Dr. Nakamura also studies the impact of racism and stereotypes in sport. She is currently focusing on the role of sport in the lives of mixed-raced people and Muslim people.

Bringing a soccer ball to a knife fight? The relevance of sport and social inclusion within a context of growing racism and hate: Just over a decade ago, Allan Gregg (2006) wrote that Canada was facing an identity crisis because multiculturalism had failed. As a nation where diversity and its policy towards difference have become deeply engrained in our national narratives and sense of nationhood, we had reached a point where we needed to come to terms with the possibility that the multiculturalism project had not achieved the unity that had been expected. Who would have thought that ten years later, Donald Trump would be the one to help invigorate Canada’s multiculturalism, where we take pride in our diversity, where we yet again define ourselves as more inclusive than, and more welcoming than, our southern neighbours? We are nonetheless, also bearing witness to growing explicit hatred in our nation. And so it seems we remain at a crossroads: What is the future of multiculturalism? In many urban centres in Canada, multiculturalism manifests in the diversity of foods, neighbourhoods, and festivals that are available for us to enjoy. But as an everyday lived experience, there are limits to how this diversity may be expressed, and how much and what kind of difference we are willing to include, particularly when we organize, live, work, learn, or socialize along ethnic, cultural, or religious lines. Are people being isolationist or anti-multiculturalism? Are fears of segregation and separation warranted?

Dr. Nakamura’s talk will engage with these questions, using sport as the point of entry into this discussion. Sport is a pertinent site to consider because it is assumed to facilitate community building. Around the world, particularly in Europe, sport has been deployed as a site, strategy, or vehicle to break down walls, barriers of language and cultural difference, and promote social inclusion. Are learning a new sport together, playing on the same team or cheering for Canadian teams at international events enough to overcome hate and racism?